♀Marguerite Pitre

Marguerite Pitre (about 1683 – 12 July 1747) was an Acadian of Port-Royal. She died in the summer of 1747, weeks after two of her grown sons were buried. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Marie-Louise Comeau.

Early life

Marguerite was born about 1683, the daughter of Jean Pitre and Marie Pesselet of Port-Royal. Her father was a taillandier, a maker of edge tools such as axes and scythes. He probably died about 1689, and her mother married François Robin. At the census of 1693 Marguerite, aged 10, was living with her mother and stepfather, her brothers Claude, Marc, Pierre and François and her younger sister Jeanne. She was still in her stepfather’s household in 1701, aged 18.

Marriage and family

About 1702 she married Abraham Comeau, the son of Pierre Comeau and Jeanne Bourg. The two families were already joined: Marguerite’s brother Claude Pitre had married Abraham’s eldest sister, Marie Comeau. At the census of 1714 Abraham, aged 35, and Marguerite were living in the parish of Port-Royal with their young children, among them twin daughters, Françoise and Anne, a year old; the roll lists them next to Claude Pitre and Marie Comeau and close to Abraham’s parents.

The couple are said to have had twelve children, born between about 1703 and 1727; the youngest, Catherine, was born on 2 May 1727. Their daughter Marie-Louise Comeau married Joseph Préjean at Port-Royal in 1723 and settled with him at Chipoudy, on Shepody Bay. Port-Royal had been in British hands since 1710, as Annapolis Royal, and in December 1729 her husband swore the oath of allegiance to King George II with the other Acadians of the Annapolis River; in 1731 he set his mark to their refusal to have their lands surveyed.

Death

The summer of 1747 brought three deaths to the family within six weeks. Their son Charles was buried at Port-Royal on 4 June 1747 and their son François on 18 June, each recorded as a son of Abraham and Marguerite. Marguerite died on 12 July and was buried the next day. The records do not give a cause for any of the three deaths. Her burial names her as the wife of Abraham Comeau, and Pierre Amireau and Jean Baptiste Commeau stood as witnesses.

The family

Anne Comeau and Elizabeth Comeau married two Vincent brothers from Pisiguit^W, Pierre and Jean, at Beaubassin^W in 1733 and 1734, a compiled family history records. In 1767, among the declarations made by Acadian exiles on Belle Île, off the coast of Brittany, the Vincent family recorded that Pierre had died in Canada and Jean on the coast of the Miramichi, and that Anne and Elizabeth were then at Halifax, in Nova Scotia, with their families. Catherine Comeau married Grégoire Bourgeois at Port-Royal on 10 February 1749; the same family history records that he was deported to Massachusetts with his family in 1755.

Notes

Birth and age

The census ages place her birth about 1683. The 1693 roll gives her age as 10, and the rolls of 1698, 1700 and 1701, in published transcriptions, give 15, 17 and 18. The 1686 roll lists an unnamed daughter aged 2 in the household of “Jean Pitre 61 / Marie Peseler 45”, which fits her. Bona Arsenault’s Histoire et généalogie des Acadiens gives 1684. Léopold Lanctôt’s Familles acadiennes (1994) gives her age as 19 at her marriage in 1702 but her birth as 1689, which cannot both be right. Her burial in 1747 gives her age as “environ soixante dix ans”, older than the censuses make her.

Parents

The 1693 roll lists her as “Marguerite 10” in the household of “francois Robin 50 / Marie Pesseler sa f[em]me 48”, with the children Claude, Marc, Pierre, François and Jeanne; a later hand wrote “Pitre” in the margin. Arsenault calls her “fille de Jean et de Marie Pesselet” and lists her among the nine children of Jean Pitre, a taillandier born in 1636, who died about 1689; his widow married François Robin. The census of 1671 enters “Jehan Pitre aagé de 35 ans” under the trade “Tailliandier”. Marie Pesselet was buried at Port-Royal on 27 December 1707 as the widow of Pitre and of François Robin.

Marriage and children

Arsenault gives the marriage as “vers 1702” and Lanctôt as 1702. Arsenault lists twelve children: Marie-Louise 1703, Jean 1704, Jeanne and Jean-Baptiste 1708, Marie-Marguerite 1710, Françoise and Anne 1713, Elizabeth 1716, Charles 1718, Madeleine 1720, François 1722 and Catherine 1727. The two published versions of the 1714 roll differ on the daughters at home: Arsenault’s L’Acadie des ancêtres names four, and Lanctôt counts five. That the couple were listed beside Claude Pitre and Marie Comeau rests on the order in which Lanctôt prints the households. Catherine’s birth date comes from the Nova Scotia Archives database of the Port-Royal register. Abraham’s oath of 1729 and the refusal of 1731 are printed, with the signers’ names, in Placide Gaudet’s Acadian Genealogy and Notes (1906).

The burials of 1747

The three burials are entered in the register of Saint-Jean-Baptiste at Port-Royal, which records Marguerite as “marguerite pitre epouse d’abraham commeau”, buried on 13 July 1747, the day after her death. The Nova Scotia Archives database calls her husband “Abraham Pitre”; the act names him Abraham Commeau. The register gives Charles’s age as about 23 and François’s as about 25; Arsenault’s years, 1718 and 1722, would make Charles the elder. When Catherine married in 1749, the register called her mother deceased.

The Vincent marriages

The Belle Île declaration names Anne as “fille d’Abraham Comeau et de Marguerite Pitre”; it gives Jean Vincent’s wife only as Elizabeth Comeau, and Lanctôt identifies her as the couple’s daughter. Lanctôt gives the two Vincent marriages at Beaubassin as 25 June 1733 and 24 May 1734 (25 May on another of his pages), and records that both couples settled at Petitcoudiac and took refuge at Miramichi in 1755. He gives Grégoire Bourgeois’s full name as Joseph-Grégoire.